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Judge Ben B. Lindsey 




ON 



The Child— The Movie— 




"I defy anyone to show that one city or state with 
censorship is any better than other cities or states 
like our own where there is no censorship." 



"The movie is a real League of Nations, binding the 
world together through seeing that they are all just 
the same as each other." 



"Pontius Pilate was the first great censor." 



"I believe in real religion and real education." 



Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc. 




and Censorship 




WILL H. HAYS, Pres. 



469 Fifth Avezme 
New York City 



Judge Ben B. Lindsey 



Judge of the Juvenile and Family Court of Denver, 

Colorado. 

TUDGE LINDSEY is one of the best known of 
^ Americans. He is an authority on child wel- 
fare and juvenile treatment — a writer of note on 
the subject, a lecturer, a man whose opinions are 
sought. 

In January, 1899, he was appointed public guar- 
dian and administrator of the County Court of 
Denver, that under the first Colorado Juvenile 
law of April 12th, 1899, became the Juvenile 
Court. The following year he was appointed, and 
ten times since has been elected Judge of that 
Court, in which he is now serving his twenty-sixth 
year. In Who's Who for 1925 he is listed as the 
"promoter of the juvenile court system and origi- 
nator of some of its features and has interna- 
tional reputation as an authority upon juvenile 
delinquency." 

Judge Lindsey is author of the Colorado Juve- 
nile Court laws and with his collaborator (Wain- 
wright Evans) the recent much discussed book 
"The Revolt of Modern Youth." In this book 
Judge Lindsey takes a firm stand against censor- 
ship. 

The following address was delivered by Judge 
Lindsey at the Fourth National Motion Picture 
Conference in Chicago, 111., in February, 1926. 



L 



The Child — The Movie — 
■^\^ and Censorship 

C\ % By JUDGE BEN B. LINDSEY 



ADIES and Gentlemen 



As stated in your program, "This is an open conference with 
a free platform — all are welcome." 

I trust that I may be of some service. Even though we differ 
in methods, our purposes are the same. We want clean, wholesome 
motion pictures and we want to protect the youth of this country 
against any evil in this popular form of entertainment, as well as to 
secure for them the best that is to be had in this new, marvelous 
method of human expression. And whatever may be our differences, 
I wish to express my own appreciation of the value of an association 
like this in bringing about a free and open discussion that may help 
to disclose to us real remedies against the evils that we all oppose. 

I have friends here in this conference with whom I differ as to 
methods to that end, but I have the highest respect for the sincerity 
of their purposes, as I believe they will have for mine. For my views 
on the subject of governmental censorship are well known. They 
have been formulated after nearly twenty-seven years of experience 
in a Juvenile Court that came into existence under our Colorado law 
of 1899 — the same year as that of the Juvenile Court of your own 
great city of Chicago, which, next to Denver, I count as home, because 
here reside some of my dearest friends. 



VIEWS ARE WELL-KNOWN 

When it was suggested that, having engagements in and about 
Chicago, under the auspices of the Redpath Lyceum Bureau, having 
its main offices here, I might be of service in presenting my views on 
censorship at this meeting, I said I would prefer to do so under the 
auspices of some disinterested group. As a result of this preference, 
you have heard read the request of Mrs. Virginia Palmer, Chairman 
of the Motion Picture Division of our Colorado State Parent-Teacher 
Association, requesting that I be heard here. 

However, I wish to assure you that this is not by way of any 
apology whatever in presenting these views under any auspices, in- 
terested or disinterested. There can be no crime in any event for 
a man to do that when his sincere views are as well known as mine 
are and as, in recent years, they have been expressed literally hun- 
dreds of times. 

In nearly every public lecture I have given on childhood 
and crime during recent years, I have stated over and over 
again my opposition to governmental censorship of the 
movies as a remedy for evil. 



3 



In our recent book, THE REVOLT OF MODERN YOUTH, we 
took a firm stand against Censorship, and within a few days, it will 
be exactly five years ago that, in the City of Detroit, I delivered an 
address dealing with censorship and crime in the movies. That ad- 
dress was very widely circulated. Part of it was printed and thou- 
sands of copies were distributed. And so, when I left Denver with 
the request of Mrs. Virginia Palmer, the State Chairman of Motion 
Pictures of our State Parent-Teacher Association, that I take part in 
this conference, I redictated an old address of five years ago and 
brought it with me. To this I have added some more extended ob- 
servations in confirmation of the conclusions there expressed after 
much thought, much study and much experience. 

SANER METHODS BY COOPERATION 

This all compels me to favor what I consider the saner, 
more constructive censorship by cooperation between social 
agencies, the public, the producers and exhibitors as against 
what I believe to be the more questionable and dangerous 
power of governmental censorship. 

Mrs. Palmer, the Chairman of the Motion Picture Department 
of our State Parent-Teacher Association, supplied me for this meet- 
ing with considerable literature of that organization in support of 
their stand for the former kind of censorship as against the latter. 
The Parent-Teacher Association of Colorado is a part of that great 
national organization of the best motherhood and womanhood of this 
country. In recent years, they conducted a series of discussions and 
debates on the entire subject of so-called "censorship" or state regu- 
lation of motion pictures. This involved an investigation of what 
is being done in this regard in all other cities and states. It resulted 
in the adoption at their State Convention at Colorado Springs in May 
1921, of the following resolutions: 

WHEREAS, The picture loving public should be given an 
opportunity to act as their own censors, and 

WHEREAS, Pictures cannot be adapted to the mentality 
of the lowest type of person and potential criminals are much 
in the minority, and therefore, may not be considered as rep- 
resenting the patronage of the Motion Picture Theatre, and 

WHEREAS, All lasting reforms are derived from within, 

BE IT RESOLVED: That it be the continued policy of 
the Mothers Congress and Parent-Teacher Associations to 
work for the Better Film movement through cooperation, 
selection and for public education. 

EDUCATION AND SELECTION 

This organization has never found any reason to change their 
opinion thus expressed. At their recent state convention, they again 
reaffirmed it. A most successful constructive work, formulated at 
their state conventions, has been carried on in behalf of better pic- 
tures. They oppose censorship with their motto: "Education and 



4 



Selection." In addition to this definite plan, there is a constant propa- 
ganda carried on among its various units for the type of picture that 
they think deserves encouragement. Their efforts to create a public 
demand for better pictures and to support the producers and exhibi- 
tors in their efforts to furnish them, has been so superior to any 
city or state censorship boards that any demand for any such remedy 
in Colorado has become extinct. No one would think of giving it the 
slightest encouragement in face of the big, constructive work of the 
Parent-Teacher organization of our state. 

I am glad to avail myself, not only of the privilege afforded 
through the request referred to, that I take part in this program, but 
also to give some of my own views, after more than a quarter of a 
century in the Juvenile Court, on the whole subject of the problem 
of good and evil as it relates to motion pictures. 

THE MOVIES, CENSORSHIP AND CRIME 

I do not agree with those who claim that crime among youth is 
so largely due to what is shown in motion pictures. Of course, some 
of the week-minded and the vicious have doubtless been stimulated 
to crime by something good or bad that they have seen in the movies. 
This may also be said of what they have read in the Bible, the news- 
papers, magazines and all kinds of literature, or through the misuse 
of automobiles, dancing or music. But we must always keep in mind 
that far more good than evil has come out of all these things. 

Good and evil is a matter of relativity. It is comparative. 
If motion pictures are to reflect from nature the face of 
virtue, they must also show the image of vice. To make 
virtue lovable and vice despisable, we must know what they 
are. We all admit there are decent and indecent, acceptable 
and unacceptable methods by which this ought to be done, 
yet, it must be done or there can be no lessons from life; there 
can be no strengthening of character. By no system of wet- 
nursism, can you solve the problem of crime by hiding bad 
things or the truth about them, or by depriving children of 
the right, under proper conditions, to see, to hear and to know 
what they are. 

They may be worse off if shielded from knowledge of evil or 
spared any contact with it. They will be better and stronger if wisely 
familiarized with evil in order to know how to avoid it — or, facing 
it, to conquer it. "Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, that to 
be hated needs but to be seen." And I would rather take a chance for 
youth through their seeing vice too often than in not seeing it enough 
if they are to learn to hate it and so triumph over it. 

We are losing sight in this country of some fundamental things 
about the whole problem of good and evil. As a result, when some 
of our reforms and crusades are won, we may be worse off than when 
we started. If our remedies do not fail altogether, they produce 
worse evils. The "kick" that some people get out of reforming often 
blinds them to the facts about good and evil and how to overcome 
evil. A man on a jag is always blind to the things about him. 



5 



CHILDREN ELEVATED, INSPIRED 



Now, I am here to say, after talking it over with Court officers, 
who have worked with me for years, that we have yet to find one 
case of crime among youth that could fairly be traced just to the 
movies. I do not recall more than two or three cases in my experience 
of over a quarter of a century on the bench, where there was even 
reasonable ground to believe that the cause of crime was due just to 
what the offender had seen in the movies. 

But I do know of thousands of children who have been ele- 
vated, inspired and made happier because of the movies; 
who have been kept off the streets, out of the alleys, the 
vulgar story-telling of the barnyards and a multitude of idle, 
evil associations, by the wholesome appeals and opportunities 
of the movies. 

I also know that other agencies — against which no censorship, 
local or national, has ever been proposed — have done far more toward 
producing crime than the movies. If we did not have any motion 
pictures at all, we would have far more crime than we have. Noth- 
ing in the last fifty years of the most eventful history of all time, 
has done more to reduce sin and crime and add to the happiness, 
education and progress of the human race than motion pictures. And 
it is going to do more and more in this regard in the years to come. 

I am satisfied that most of the cases of crime which good people 
trace to the movies are generally caused by misunderstanding or 
misuse of perfectly proper stories as well as bad stories thrown on 
the screen. This is shown by the fact that there is certainly no more 
and probably less crime, especially among youth, in cities, where 
there is no local or state censorship. 



CENSORSHIP DOES NOT IMPROVE 

I defy anyone to show that one city or state with censorship is 
any better in this regard than other cities or states like our own, 
where there is no censorship, and where such organizations as our 
Parent-Teacher Associations are firmly against it. 

They show us a messy lot of contradictions and silly absurdities 
in mussing up films, aggravating, useless annoyances, and frequently 
petty politics and tyranny as the result of their differences of opinion 
about what is good and what is bad, but they cannot show that they 
are any better or that they have accomplished anything provably 
worth while, that could not have been as well, or better done with- 
out these, to me, ridiculous hobbles. 

Anything they have done has been far better done in cities like 
Denver, through cooperation of civic agencies with the producers and 
exhibitors themselves. Any good that has ever come out of city or 
state censorship is sure to be overbalanced by just as much evil and 
just as much nonsense as any that has been prevented — if any has 
been really prevented. 



6 



MOVIES BATTLE AGAINST WAR 



The movies are going to do more than any other agency to pre- 
vent the greatest of all crimes, horrid war. Through motion pictures, 
all nations, people, races and creeds, all speaking the same language, 
of the movies, are being brought into concord, acquaintanceship and 
understanding. And when they know and understand each other, 
they will love and cease to hate each other and war shall be no more. 
It is a real League of Nations in binding them together through see- 
ing that they are all just the same as each other — that there are no 
bad people and no good people when properly understood, but there are 
bad things and good things as they reflect through the bodies or be- 
havior and conduct of people, depending on causes, which as yet we 
know little about, and that the great lesson of Life is to learn how to 
wisely fight evil more and people less. 

Mankind has conquered all the reptiles and the wild beasts that 
threatened his mastery of this planet. Why? Because, primarily, 
he could see them, because they were known to him. But he hasn't 
conquered all disease — that remains to threaten his dominion. Why? 
Because it is mostly the unseen beasts — the bugs, parasites and 
germs just now beginning to be seen. As with evil and disease, the 
movies will do more than all else besides to make them real — to make 
them known. 

IT IS THUS THE GREATEST EDUCATOR THE WORLD HAS 
EVER HAD— THE VISUAL EDUCATOR. 

And when all things are seen and known to man, he becomes 
forever the undisputed soverign of the world. Through visual edu- 
cation the average child of twelve is in the future to know more in 
academic education than the present college graduate. Largely 
through the movies, among the future great inventors of the world, 
we shall behold children from ten to twenty-one years of age. 

OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD 

How, Master, shall we overcome evil — is still the eternal ques- 
tion of a war-ridden, hate-ridden, fearful world. Instead of any 
longer listening, it is growing listless to the eternal answer — "Over- 
come evil with good." He never said to overcome it through govern- 
mental suppression and the hate-breeding violence of forcible censor- 
ships. That was the answer of Pontius Pilate. And Pontius Pilate 
was the first great censor and Jesus Christ the first great victim of 
censorship. On behalf of this nation's childhood, whose destinies are 
to be injured by such false remedies, I appeal from the gospel of 
Pilate to the gospel of Christ. 

But what shall we do, you may ask, to guard that destiny which 
we all equally have at heart ? It is not an easy thing always to know 
just how to overcome evil with good. It is much easier for some 
parents, teachers, unwise, if not ungracious pastors, to leave the job 
to a board of censors or some new-fangled statute law with its abuses, 
blackmails, grafts, persecutions, stupidities and tyrannies. Are we to 
be a nation of dodgers, of weazened shirkers, putting responsibility on 



7 



laws, laws and more laws, bureaus, bureaucrats, censors and regula- 
tors until we are glutted, choked and suffocated with laws to let any 
George do it, but the right George? 

Are we to become a nation of * 'squealers, " passing the buck from 
parents, homes, schools and churches for their responsibility for 
Youth, to some perfectly human-to-err censors who may be wise and 
good but likely to be mostly foolish, if, as in the case of some of our 
prohibition regulators, they are not crooks and grafters, to flounder 
in their own helplessness because they do not know what is good or 
what is evil or how to fight it. 

Consider the fact that even now a picture that one governmental 
censor board says is good, another in some other state, condemns as 
bad. And consider the rank injustice of city or state censorship 
authorities passing a "bad" picture as "good" in one such city or state, 
and this same perfectly "good" picture as "bad" in another, as these 
different censorship boards often do. 

FATHERS FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM 

Only gradually and painfully, through science mostly, now more 
and more handmaiden of real education and real religion, shall we 
know how to overcome evil. It is always with good. It is too big a 
problem for me to give all my views on here. In our "Revolt of Mod- 
ern Youth" I took an entire book to tell more about it as I see it. But 
I do not believe Christ was wrong nor that the people of this Republic 
are wrong, who since its foundation in the wisdom of our Fathers, have 
fought for just such liberties as governmental censorship will deny us. 

Now, I think a great deal of good could be done in the fight 
against evil if our parents and Sunday-school teachers would question 
youth more as to their motives for righteous conduct, and with more 
time and patience set them right as to their real meaning. You ask 
them why they do right and they will generally tell you that it is 
"to keep out of jail," or "the cop'll get me," or "I'd get a licking" or 
'Til go to hell." 

Thus, from perfectly well-intentioned teaching, what we are put- 
ting mostly in their lives is misunderstanding. That is, we are trying 
to get virtue mostly by artificial restaints — the same kind of restraints 
that are now being proposed through forcible censorship and regula- 
tion. These fears no longer serve as restraints and we are very much 
at fault in doing so little to substitute natural restraints as these 
artificial ones are passing. 

Fundamentally, it is our overstrain in the demand for these arti- 
ficial restraints upon human conduct — restraints that come from 
without — that is making most of the crime in this country. And their 
over-emphasis to the neglect of natural restraints is due far more to 
ignorance in churches and schools than the motion pictures. There is 
such a thing as going too far in our insatiate demand for these arti- 
ficial restraints. It is a greater crime against youth, fostered mostly 
by well-meaning church people who are ignorant about youth. They 
are causing us to forget all about the more important restraints, or to 



8 



indulge in a lazy indifference regarding them because of our mistaken 
faith in restraints so largely artificial. 

As against these, what we need most in the lives of youth 
are the natural restraints. They come from within. They 
enable children and people, in the face of every evil and temp- 
tation, without being afraid to know about it, to see it or to 
hear about it, to be so fortified from within against it that 
they will stand up to meet it and conquer it. In other words, 
to have the strength of character to do right because it is 
right — not through the fear of punishment or the hope of 
rewards — but through true education and religion. 

These artificial restraints, so long thus over-emphasized in schools 
and churches, and beheld on every hand in demands for more suppres- 
sions, regulations, prohibitions, punishments, coercions and censor- 
ships, are failing. And it is our insistent refusal to substitute more 
of the natural restrains in homes, schools and churches, that is the 
great cause of crime in this country. You do not cure evil by more 
censorships and prohibitions, don'ts, verbotens and taboos. You are 
just adding fuel to the flame you are setting up in this country. The 
restraints of hell-fire and damnation are gone. They do not frighten 
any more. Those of policemen, prisons and fears of punishments are 
going just as fast. The thing that makes most people good in this 
country is not any of these things. The thing that will make the bad 
ones good is more of the thing that has made the good ones good — 
the natural restraints. 

GOOD AND EVIL ARE RELATIVE 

I said good and evil are relative. You cannot helpfully know one 
without the other. They should, of course, appear in proper perspec- 
tive. Their relationship for moral uplift should be clear. I insist that 
the great majority of the movies do thus emphasize them in their true 
light. Vice is ever shown as the enemy and destroyer of human hap- 
piness; virtue as the only true course to secure the real joys of life; 
that achieves the only victories worth while. 

In the movies, righteousness wins ; sin loses. The hero tri- 
umphs. The villain bites the dust. 

Not only decency but the pocketbook guarantees these general 
averages, and that general average is the best we can hope for in any- 
thing. Nothing is perfect and censorship will not make it so. You 
cannot legislate right understanding into the human mind. By the 
more and more decent methods of showing life, as I believe to be more 
and more the rule in the movies, they furnish a great outlet, not only 
to the natural, wholesome craving for excitement and adventure, but 
for a necessary and legitimate amount of sex expression which other- 
wise, from sheer suppression, is far more harmful and more likely to 
result in sin and crime. 

Some of the gossamer fabric of unreality, as in fantasies, dreams 
and fairy tales, is just as necessary in the movies as are the realities 
of life, to minister to the complexes and, as governors, to release the 



9 



strange suppressions of nature. There is always to be expected the 
decent licenses of poetry and the exaggerations of fiction. 

NATIONAL HOBBY TO ATTACK 

It has become a national hobby of ours, in the absence of much 
good sense, to indulge in these thrilling and adventurous battles 
against evil until we are becoming so ridiculous that only a modern 
Cervantes, with another Don Quixote, can bring us to our senses. 
Each time, in each onslaught, we have some one thing for the "goat." 
Then we all assemble for the chase. For many of us, it is great fun. 
For others, it is a grievous concern. At one time it is the legalized 
liquor traffic; at another, it is the cigarette or the automobile, the 
racy literature, the dance or jazz music. Each time it is this or that 
one thing that is causing all the sin. I do not know what it is going 
to be when the kids begin spooning in the clouds in the aerial autos 
of tomorrow. Neither the censors, nor the parents, nor the laws can 
follow them there. At the present time the "goat' is the movies. 

We have the admission of the advocates of censorship that evil 
among youth may come from other agencies besides movies. Some 
of these agencies are automobiles, music (jazz or grand opera), depart- 
ment store windows, newspapers, books, magazines, ordinary pictures, 
etc. Now their logic must be that the youth of this nation are lost 
beyond redemption unless we apply their censorship for evil in the 
movies, to evil in all these other agencies. Unless this is their pur- 
pose, of what shall it avail us to get evil out of the movies by censor- 
ship — unless, by the same methods, we extract it from all other agen- 
cies of usefulness or happiness ? 

On the other hand, if our youth are not to be lost because of our 
failure to apply censorship to automobiles and other agencies, then 
why apply it to the movies? In the case of the movies, as in the 
case of all these other agencies for both good and evil, why should 
we not depend on existing laws against crime, and in addition, what 
is far more important, why should we not trust to the good old insti- 
tutions of parents, homes, real education, real religion and the devel- 
opment of scientific truth to fortify youth against evil, by equipping 
them with strength in their own souls to conquer it. I tell you that 
it cannot be done in any other way. 

BUILD SELF RELIANT YOUTH 

Our vision in this matter of censorship must not be limited to 
the mere entertainment of motion pictures furnished by the present 
motion picture industry. It must go far beyond that. For, in addi- 
tion to censoring all forms and agencies of pleasure now contemplated, 
the amazing power demanded by the censorship advocates includes the 
power to also censor every teaching of science (evolution and other- 
wise), economics, patriotism, religion and government. As one after 
the other shall fall to the fetters of censorship, we shall get further 
and further away from real remedies for evil, only to become more 
and more enslaved to the forces of reaction of fanaticism, ignorance, 
superstition, despotism and tyranny. All this crusading for such false 
remedies is making us more and more the laughing stock of the world. 



10 



If we yield to the demands of its well-meaning, but mistaken zealots, 
we shall nurse up a generation of human jelly fish, of weaklings, 
dependents, morons and criminals instead of a nation of sturdy, self- 
reliant boys and girls. 

IMPROVEMENT RAPID 

No one deplores more than I do the commercialization of certain 
phases of what we call the sex appeal or improper crime stories in the 
movies. No one deplores more than I do some of the stupid, inartistic, 
vulgar, uncultural, silly things in the movies. They are there as in 
books and newspapers. If censorship were a practical remedy for 
anything, we might better have it against bad taste, bad manners and 
some of the stupid, boresome movies that can do no harm to anyone 
except waste their time, and because of their very insipid stupidity, 
would meet with approval of any board of censors. It is all to be 
naturally expected in an industry or artistery so new. More patience, 
time and education are needed to correct them. No one is more anx- 
ious than I am to see them corrected. But it would be highly unjust 
not to, at the same time, keep in mind all that is right with the movies. 
In their short life of scarcely a quarter of a century, they 
have done more to correct these follies and mistakes than lit- 
erature and newspapers have done in a century. 
When I deal with naughty children, I always find more good than 
evil in them, though their accusers seldom admit it. I get more out of 
them by praising them for the good they do than by condemning them 
for the evil they do. In this way do I succeed best. By working with 
them and not against them. (Let us then, with this equally human 
thing, see all the wonderful improvement that has been made in recent 
years, not only artistically, from the standpoint of the producer, but 
also from that of the growing demand of the public for clean shows, 
and the splendid work of the producers in furnishing them.) 

PUBLIC OPINION RULES 

And even when crime and vice are presented, when it must be 
done, more and more is it being done within the bounds of decency 
and with due regard to well-established rules that most every one 
knows and accepts. Few minds differ upon what is really abscenity 
and indecency. Nothing is being more frowned upon today than the 
stories written for a mere pornographic, sensual appeal, without any 
good purpose intended or accomplished. For all of such cases, we have 
the laws against obscenity and indecency which are not near as much 
used or enforced as they might be and could be. 

And we ever have the appeal to public opinion. I believe it is in 
the end safe and sane in this country. And then there is being held 
out to us by the producers themselves the open door invitation to join 
hands with them to give the public the thing that it wants most and 
that is, clean, decent, wholesome pictures. The children are being pro- 
vided with special films and opportunities to see them. 

Cooperation between public and producer and exhibitor is 
being successfully accepted as one of the best methods of car- 
rying on propaganda in this country for better, bigger and 
cleaner pictures. 



11 



And, as a result, we are getting more and more of them all the 
time. From every standpoint in theme, story, purpose, photography, 
artistry, amazing progress has been made in the last few years. We 
have never had so many marvelous, unobjectionable pictures as now 
before the public. One of the very latest of these, "The Big Parade," 
is here. You have seen "The Ten Commandments. ,, "Ben Hur" is 
being shown. Hundreds of others could be mentioned. I hold here a 
list of several hundred such, selected by Mrs. Virginia Palmer, State 
Chairman of the Motion Picture Department of our Colorado Parent- 
Teacher Association. 

COOPERATION AND ENCOURAGEMENT 

The work of Mr. Hays and his associates in courting cooperation 
and in receiving it from so many worthy sources deserves encour- 
agement instead of criticism. It has been a great success. Any fair 
investigation of what the producers are doing under his able manage- 
ment will disclose an amazing improvement in the short time for its 
accomplishment. Let's work with them and not against them as the 
very best way to bigger and better things in the movies. 

Especially is this course important when the best minds of this 
country- — like Professor Ross, who has just addressed you — have 
warned us against the dangers of abuses sure and certain to come 
under governmental censorship, and who, for many reasons, almost 
without exception, firmly oppose it. We have overwhelming proof 
that the people of this country do not want any more of such gov- 
ernmental regulation and that they are opposed to such dangerous 
powers being vested in any set of bureaucrats. This is confirmed by 
the recent vote in Massachusetts that in their referendum to the peo- 
ple buried the demand for motion picture censorship with a tidal 
wave of "noes." It was certainly loud enough to be heard all over 
this country. The vote was 553,173 against censorship to 208,252 for 
it — a majority of 344,991 against. 

REAL EDUCATION AND RELIGION 

I am not questioning the sincerity or good motives of anyone. I 
simply question their understanding. How people can make the state- 
ments that are being made in some quarters, that the movies are 
getting worse instead of better, I cannot understand. I do not believe 
it. If they are, then it is a terrible indictment of our schools and 
churches, far more than of the movies. It is proof that they are fail- 
ing. For if this thing be true, that, without the kind of governmental 
censorship and regulation that is being proposed in some quarters, the 
movies are to get worse and worse, then the churches and schools 
had better close their doors, for the claim is equivalent to a confession 
that they are failures. I do not believe they are failures. I believe in 
real religion and in real education. I think their power and influence 
are on the up-grade in this country. It is from their wise application 
that we must look most for our remedies in the fight against evil. 
The great duty to childhood today is that of parenthood and its hand- 
maidens, the school and the church — real education and real religion. 

RESPONSIBLE PEOPLE NEEDED 

We must have in this country people responsible for these agen- 
cies, who will acquaint themselves with what evil is and equip them- 



12 



selves with the wisdom to teach children how to fight it, how to over- 
come it; that they shall come to know that the child's greatest safe- 
guard against evil is not censorship — the policeman with the club to 
direct what he shall say, hear or do — the city, state or national wet- 
nursism from the day he is born until he becomes an adult man or 
woman. 

PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY 
Rather do I appeal for the simpler and saner expedient of 
parental responsibility in companionship, spiritual training, 
education, ideals and confidences that will educate that child 
as to what evil is, to know where it lurks, and what he must 
do to avoid it ; that will teach him to hate it and despise it. 
In this work, we need the cooperation of this great, new institu- 
tion, the movies. It can be done best by thus seeking the cooperation 
of those who have the economic control of this new power, this new 
means of education, the greatest that has ever appeared in any civ- 
ilization. 

I believe it can be done, and in a very large measure, it is being 
done, with glowing opportunities and prospects for greater accom- 
plishment in the future than in the recent past. It is this sort of 
remedy that I heartily advocate rather than any censorship or regu- 
lation through city, state or national boards composed of people who 
are to be given arbitrary, tyrannical and dangerous powers over the 
development of the human mind. Such a remedy, I believe, will never 
be accepted by the American people. If it ever is, it will be the sad- 
dest day in the history of human progress since the bigotries and 
tyrannies of the Middle Ages. It would mean that the issues of the 
Scopes case in Tennessee would be as nothing compared to this new 
power of a few people to tell the balance of America what they shall 
see, hear or know, or what they shall be taught, to direct the human 
mind which alone can retard or advance the progress of the world. 

For let it be remembered that moving pictures, as a medium of 
expression in influencing the human mind, as yet, are in their infancy. 
They will be greater than the printing press, and whoever controls 
this power will do most to control the future of the human race. 

TRUST TO ALL THE PEOPLE 
I would rather trust it to all the people than to a few peo- 
ple, especially when that few are backed, as it proposed, in 
their censorship regulations, by the powers of force and vio- 
lence to impose their will upon all the others. 
Once having put in the hands of a few individuals, whether puri- 
tans or politicians, of good or evil purpose, the power to say what 
books shall be screened, what stories shall be pictured, what scientific 
knowledge or achievement shall be presented, what reform espoused 
by capital or labor, class or church, group or party, and, what shall 
not, it will demand the same right as to the newspapers, books and 
other forms of human expression, possibly the platform itself, until 
all liberty and all freedom shall be lost unless such madness, as I 
believe it to be, should, if ever successful, be met by revolt and revo- 
lution. 

The progress of art, science and literature in this country depends 
upon an unfettered, original creative imagination. There can be no 



13 



progress or creative work anywhere with the hobble of censorship on 
these things at the helm. Freedom of thinkers, scientists, and artists 
does not mean degeneracy. It means justice, truth, progress, happi- 
ness, health and beauty. The chains of censorship mean irritation, 
reaction, bigotry, vice, immorality, gloom, degeneracy and death. Of 
course there are dangers in everything — -good and evil in everything 
— all dependent on its use and understanding. But I would a thousand 
times rather take my chances on too much freedom than too much 
of these artificial restraints. 

ALREADY REGULATED 

There is, of course, some regulation of certain phases of the 
moving picture industry that is defensible. But it seems to me very 
unjust to compare the demand for censorship power to the same kind 
of governmental regulations of industrial affairs which have to do 
with business competition between individuals or corporations, or 
with the distribution of foodstuffs as to deleterious substances, on 
which no two minds can well differ after science has given its verdict. 

Reasonable regulations as to business competition, labor, ship- 
ment of films, protection from fire, ventilation, seating, spacing and 
lighting of halls may well apply to the movies. But as a more justly 
analogous case, who would say even as to foodstuffs or drugs, about 
which we hear so much, that a board of bodily appetite censors should 
have a right to say whether a city's diet should not include pork chops, 
if a person preferred them to mutton chops, simply because of the 
views or tastes of the censors, or because great religious teachers have 
censored the hog and approved the lamb; or that tea and coffee 
should be censored because other teachers say the taste of too much 
of it is worse than a moderate use of booze. The so-called badness 
of most pictures may be due far more to that which is bad in the 
taste of the censors than that which is really bad in the pictures. 

LAWS ARE SUFFICIENT 

And while I am not here discussing prohibition, yet as one of 
its original champions, I would be false to the truth if I did not, at 
least in discussing this new kind of prohibition of the thoughts of the 
human mind, refer to all the evils that have followed our efforts thus 
to curb by law the appetite of bodies. But even the case of the movies 
is different. Booze was believed to be poison for the body and the 
remedy was supposed to be complete outlawry. Well, at least we are 
not prepared to say what the final result is going to be, even though 
there may be justification there where none is here. What is poison 
for the body is much easier of ascertainment than what is poison for 
the mind. Acknowledged poisons of the mind are all met by laws 
against obscenity with their penalties and punishments. They are 
accepted as fair and just to everybody. 

But human thought, which is back of all human progress 
and of all change in the customs, morals, habits, traditions 
and affairs of mankind, is an entirely different matter. It is 
in no way justly comparable to any other form of arbitrary, 
forcible censorship regulations that any state has ever under- 
taken. It seems to me that this is so true that unprejudiced 
minds cannot justly question it. 



14 



HUMAN THOUGHT NOT TO BE TAMPERED WITH 

In the regulation of human thought, as presented through in- 
struction or entertainment in the motion pictures, books or news- 
papers, we have an entirely different problem. It is too dangerous to 
tamper with in any governmental, regulative, arbitrary way. To 
attempt it is to court the greater evils of bigotry and fanaticism, of 
racial, religious and class prejudices, of hatreds and tyrannies. 

I would a thousand times rather see civilization subjected to all 
the dangers which may lurk in an entirely, unregulated and uncen- 
sored press, or of books, plays or motion pictures, than to risk the far 
greater evils of arbitrary, forcible, governmental censorship regu- 
lation. 

There are no committees of people on earth who have any 
such super wisdom or right to exercise any such power, no 
matter how commendable its purpose may be. 

No, my friends, those who propose such remedies are honest but 
mistaken. I wish they could all be convinced. I know their purposes 
are good. I wish they would join the multitude of constructive 
fathers, mothers, preachers, teachers, business men and citizens, 
through the work of the home, school, church and press, enlisting, as 
I believe we can, the cooperation and help of those who produce and 
distribute the movies themselves, to get bigger, better and cleaner 
pictures. 

Decorating the walls of this room, we have held up to us a picture 
of the crusader, St. George, in pursuit of the Dragon. It is an inter- 
esting poster. I have seen it held up to children and parents in 
Sunday-schools and churches. It has for us a great lesson. But I 
sometimes wonder if it is understood. In this picture, St. George is 
clad in armor. 

USING ONE'S OWN STRENGTH 

It is the symbol of HIS OWN STRENGTH and power to meet and 
slay the dragon — the evil he encounters. 

Thus, down the path of life you have him started. He goes alone. 
He is protected by no governmental wet-nursism. No censors have 
preceded him to chase the dragons from his path. Now, just imagine 
the censors doing that, be they a certain type of dear, old ladies who 
never will be satisfied that anything is good if it pictures vice or crime, 
or well-meaning Puritans with worse complexes, or crafty politicians 
with itching palms, snooping into every crack and cranny for the 
smell of dragons (evil) to shoo them off the path before young 
George may proceed upon his way. 

I hear them saying, "Come on, Georgie, dear boy; the path is 
'lear; we censors have done your work; we have seen to it that not 
»,ven a suspicious tabby cat can cross your path. You have no fight 
o make; we will spare you even the sight of a dragon (evil) on the 
oad." 

Is that what you are going to do to Young America ? Change the 
oble knighthood of conflict and struggle to the milksophood of apron 



15 



strings ? Yet such is governmental censorship. Against it, I protest. 
Against it, modern youth revolts. I beseech you in their name, that 
you avoid a step so fatal and so false. 

I know you do not want to make mollycoddles of this younger 
generation because a few morons or even alert, but vicious-minded, 
persons, have become criminals from something good or bad they 
have seen in the movies. I do not want to see methods adopted in 
mistaken purpose of fighting evil whose effect is only to make insipid, 
dependent, hot-house plants of modern youth. 

I want to see a self-reliant Young America, I want to see 
it grow to sturdy manhood, like the oak that faces and fights 
the storm and fights best where the foe is known best and en- 
countered most. 

PREPARE YOUTH FOR THE PATH 

This is the only right way to successfully equip the youth of 
America with moral, physical and mental efficiency. Then, and only 
then, as modern St. Georges, thus armored, they can be trusted 
THEMSELVES to meet the dragons of evil that cross the path of life. 
For down that path they have to go. You cannot prepare the path 
for them. You cannot clear it of the dragons. Forcible governmental 
censorship can't do it and ought not to do it. 

It's our job to prepare youth for the path, the big job 
parents, teachers and preachers are neglecting in their mis- 
taken effort too much to prepare the path for them. I do 
beseech you to direct your efforts more to preparing youth for 
the path and less to preparing the path for youth. Then, 
with perfect faith, you can trust him to go down that path, 
and though it be strewn with dragon's teeth, he will emerge 
triumphant, the glorious youth that he is — Young America, 
the noblest, bravest, wisest, most loyal, generous and just 
that the world has ever seen — his own best censor. 



543 - 




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